


I See You

by InnerSpectrum



Series: Mystrade is Our Division Prompts [21]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Facebook: Mystrade is our Division Fic Prompts, Light Angst, Mystrade is our Division FB Fic Prompts, POV First Person, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 23:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16881297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum
Summary: Mycroft is blinded in an attack. In the hospital recuperating, there is only one thing he is desperate for...





	I See You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mystrade is our Division FB Fic Prompts | Blind

Light.  It’s faint, barely there, just a slant, just enough to pierce the darkness.

I see light!

> Had the ministry listened to my warning of the unrest a month ago, I likely would not have had need to be in the consulate auditorium when the mortar crashed through the wall adjacent to me.
> 
> All of it a moot point as I listen to the various beeps and boops and blips of the machinery around me that tell me I am alive. As if my pains were not telling the tale enough. Granted the pains are but a dull ache, for now - the morphine drip doing its job – but they are there.
> 
> The force of its blast blew me several feet away. Second-degree burns on my right arm from the blast, dislocated left shoulder, fractured tibia, broken index, middle and ring finger of my right hand from the impact. The most problematic injury being the blunt force trauma to my head.
> 
> My eyes are closed. The bandages that cover them render me as effectively blind as the mortar round that crashed into the auditorium of the consulate. This perennial darkness is one I have not yet become accustomed. My mind supplies the images of the hospital room, the machinery attached to me, the changing temperatures and staff shifts are my markers of time, but I see them in my mind's eye only.
> 
> Those that believe in Him – with a capital H – say He gives where He takes away. There is a truth to that. Understanding, that the intellectual lacking in most is no more their fault than the intellectual superiority of my own, and to a slighter degree my brother’s, is ours does not always help in my day-to-day dealings with such minds. Thus, I have lived so much of my life kept distant from the vast majority of the goldfish that are the human race for my own compos mentis. Conversely, having found someone who understands me the way I am, has in fact made me sensitive to so much more.
> 
> Thus, when I hear Gregory enter the room my hands reach out for him of their own volition, my own stoicism be damned.
> 
> I hold on to him as much as my body, my drugs and the lines attached to me allow as I shudder in the memory of the blast. The roar and heat of the fire, the screams, the feel of dust and debris settling around me, my head pounding and me in the rubble, my body in excruciating pain, trying to crawl away from the heat by feel, with me unable to see any of it. None of that had pained me as much as the knowledge that I would never be able to see Gregory’s rugged face again. Gregory who sees beauty in the physical me that I still do not see in myself, when he is in fact such a beautiful physical specimen.
> 
> Careful of my injuries, the touch of his strong hands pulling me into his arms is my undoing. I hear him speaking, but I cannot see!
> 
> In that moment the only thing I wanted was to see his face once more.
> 
> It is too much. I do not realize I am crying until I feel him push me back and dry my cheek. I feel as his thumb idly grazes just under the bandages. I look down and imagine I see just the tip of his thumb along my left cheek between the bandages and that was when I saw it.

I startle at the slant of light.

Gregory’s thumb moves slightly and for the first time I know it for what it is. 

It is scant. A mere slash of gray in the darkness, but I know it is not the phosphenes of my closed eyes.

“My?” I hear the concern in his voice in reaction to my sudden stillness.

Unable to speak, I place my hand over his and slowly bring it up creating a shadow. Stunned, I quickly move it again and it lightens.

“Oh my God!” I gasp loudly scratching desperately at the bandages, the splints on my right hand impeding me.

“Mycroft!” Gregory grabs my hands “Love, stop! Stop!”

He doesn’t understand. I… I see light. I see light! Maybe… Maybe I can – oh God, can I?

“Sherlock! Get his doctor. Mycroft needs these bandages off – now!” Greg yells holding my hands away from my face.

“Focus on my voice, Mycroft. Ignore everything else you hear or feel. Okay?”

Still unable to vocalize in my anxiety. I simply nod.

Gregory talks to me, his voice soothing, calming. It is the voice he uses when he knows I am near the end of my tether and far too close to a panic attack. He places my left hand on his chest and takes deep breaths as he speaks. Slowly I find myself breathing with him.

I am almost myself again when I let more of the world in.

“He must see some light. That is the only thing I can think of that would set him off so.” I hear Sherlock speak.

“Most patients get anxious when that happens, and we’re not talking about your average patient.” John adds, “Good or ill he needs to know, go get his doctor.”

By the time Dr. Jonesboro enters with Sherlock, I am ready.

“Even if you have to bandage his eyes back up again, he needs to know if he can see me.” Greg explains the crux of the matter. I squeeze his hand gratefully and turn my head to the sound of my doctor as he approaches the bed.

I hear as John walks over to lower the lights in the room.

My eyes are closed and it is tense as the bandages are slowly unwrapped from my eyes. All the while he runs down the required spiel until snap at him. Gregory calls me out on it and apologizes to him for me because he knows it will not fall from my lips.

“He’s about as sorry as you are lacking in compassion, detective inspector.” he quips in response to Greg's apology. Having been my primary physician for nearly twenty-years, Jonesboro is well aware of who I am and continues with the medical necessities as he finishes.

I start to breathe heavier as I sense a slow lightening of the world beyond my lids. I feel Gregory’s grip on my hands tighten slightly, in reaction to me.

When Jonesboro steps away. Greg kisses my hands and somehow, I know he nods at me. 

“Are you aware that you just nodded to me in encouragement when I can’t see you?” I ask amused, suddenly something I will never admit to – nervousness.

“I am aware you can stop delaying and open your eyes.” Gregory says.

I know we are breaking medical protocol. Dr. Jonesboro should be first, flashing a small torch, checking dilation.

I do not care.

I slowly open my eyes.

The lights are lowered than what they normally are and I mentally thank John for the foresight as I start to see a blob of a shape as if it were the negative of a camera film, but I know that outline. It takes a few moments, but slowly there he is. My vision is still clearing, so all the tiny tells are not back within my grasp yet, but I see more than enough. 

I unerringly reach out and touch his face. I smile at the Christmas tree pin on his blazer lapel. Only Greg. In all of this I had forgotten it was the holidays. That is why I need him. To remind me to see all these little things that I would otherwise ignore as unimportant.

“I see you.” I whisper in grateful wonder at the rugged face before me. Warm brown eyes crinkle at the sides, he knows what I am really saying.

“I see you, too.” he smiles knowingly and kisses me.

And with that everything else in the world falls into place again.


End file.
